


The Western Sky

by novel_concept26



Category: Frozen (2013), Wicked - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for a Tumblr prompt: "Elphaba is flying from Oz; she's caught in a snow storm. Elsa finds her near her ice castle. Maybe she's hurt or unconscious."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Western Sky

Everything she does--every move, every calculation, every breath--becomes a trap. It isn't her goal. It isn't her intent. And yet, all the same, she cannot seem to stop the unraveling state of her home, her life, her family. She is walking flypaper, and the world seems unable to avoid landing and suffocating in her grasp.

So, when Elsa stumbles over the hem of a long black cloak in the middle of her newfound mountain home, she genuinely can't be  _that_  startled.

What does startle her is the look of the woman (she thinks it's a woman,  _believes_  the angles beneath the black shroud resemble breasts and hips, even if they are somewhat less familiar than anything strutting across the skin of Arendelle) lying half-conscious in the snow. Her face is sharp, her nose almost beaky. Her hair is a long raven mat, made stringy by the damp air. And her skin...

She is the shade of sin, Elsa thinks,  _and isn't that something I should know a bit about?_ It's alarming, of course--finding a body intruding upon her solitude so soon after that desperate bid for freedom, and finding one who is  _green_ , to boot--but Elsa is reasonably certain this is her fault. After all, she is the storm, the edge that lines even the strongest lungs on bitterly cold days. The flypaper. This woman is hurt, and if she's hurt in Elsa's territory, well...

Transporting her into the castle on a sheet of ice isn't terribly tricky, but getting her warm...Elsa hesitates to set fire within such a fragile beast as her new home. After several moments of uneasy hand-wringing and tiny ice sculptures (she crafts when she's nervous, particularly lately; she makes it through a phoenix, a fire hearth, and a miniature girl with braids too like Anna's before she manages to get a handle on herself and twist in the direction of productivity), she opts to set the fire just outside of the castle walls. With the woman stretched out on her side, most of the heat is blocked from the ice. It will have to do.

She settles herself on the floor a few feet away, unconsciously wrapping her arms around her knees in imitation of her sister during their mother's bedtime stories a lifetime ago. The woman, with her sickly skin, does not move for over an hour.

When she does stir, it is only to mumble strange words beneath her breath. Elsa strains her ears, managing to pick up something that sounds an awful lot like  _Galinda_ \--though what that foreign word, uttered in such an obviously distant tongue, could mean, Elsa has no comprehension. There is pain in the word, regardless of its meaning. The woman's knife-blade face contorts in her sleep, brow taut, mouth twitching. Elsa allows tiny flurries to swell and shrink between her hands, frowning.

She should not have brought her in. The woman could be bewitched, or insane; with skin like that, she might even be a demon of some caliber beyond even Elsa's understanding of evil. She could destroy everything Elsa has left, when she wakes--and, as that isn't much of anything in this sister-less, parent-less, frigid wasteland, Elsa isn't particularly interested in watching that happen. It would be better to slide her right back out the door again, back down the mountain, and let fate do what it will. Wolves, or frostbite, or an easy recovery; it has no bearing on  _her_  life. 

And still, she waits. The sun is long gone over the crest of mountains, and even the owls have ceased their midnight cries by the time the woman shifts in any truly measurable fashion. Elsa, whose mind had begun wandering back toward the kingdom she has abandoned, snaps to attention instantly.

The woman rolls, apparently seeking refuge from the sweltering flames. Her eyelids flicker, her left hand stretching, groping along the smooth ground for something...

Just like that, she is awake, dark bead eyes rolling in her emerald face. Elsa sucks in a breath, hands fisting instinctively against her chest. The woman blinks.

"Where is it?"

"Where's..."  _What?_ Elsa finishes silently, every nerve standing at absolute attention. The woman's eyes narrow.

"Don't play daft, girl."

When Elsa does not reply-- _girl? I'm a queen, you miserable creature, and I've saved your life, hell be on my own head for it_ \--the black eyes give another unseemly roll.

"The  _broomstick_. Where is my  _broomstick_?"

"I...I don't remember--" Did she see a broom? There is entirely too much snow out there to be certain, and anyway, she'd had bigger concerns than cleaning supplies. Stumbling upon a poor frozen soul was not on her list of expectations for an already terrible week.

The woman is trying to sit up. She makes it halfway, wincing, and sinks slowly back down again. Her hands are twitching--almost, Elsa notes, the way her own do when she is excessively nervous. She bites her lip.

"I'm sorry. If I've scared you. It wasn't my goal." She hesitates, eyeing Elsa up and down. Suddenly, Elsa feels deeply foolish for her choice in gown, all silvery material and endless leg slit. Her skin warms, particularly when the woman adds, almost sardonically, "Aren't you cold?"

"Hardly ever." The flush in her cheeks is that of an innocent girl, but her voice holds the stately confidence of the queen she will never be. "I'm sorry, I don't recall seeing a broom. I'm sure you can find yourself a new one out there, in town."

The woman makes a brisk sort of sound that might actually be laughter. It echoes unpleasantly in Elsa's ears. Laughter like that is only learned from listening to others, from drinking in their cruelty and forming a guard from what little doesn't cut you open. Her parents tried to keep her from all of that, once. She suspects this woman's own parents were not so kind.

"Silly girl. All these silly fair-haired women in my life. Will it never change?" The woman shakes her head, struggling again to sit upright. This time, she is successful. "That wasn't the sort of broom you can just go out and  _buy._ And the spell, well--I suppose I'll just have to try it again. It's all right. I need the practice."

She doesn't look as though it is all right, despite the obvious effort she is making to sound nonchalant. There is a tension knitting her face together that Elsa finds deeply familiar--the same tension, perhaps, reflected back at her in the days leading up to her coronation. The same tension she felt pull her brow tight whenever Anna would pound away at the door, begging to be let back into her life.

_Flypaper_ _, Anna. You deserve better than that, sister._

"I'm--" She's what?  _Sorry_? There is so much to be sorry for; Elsa doesn't believe she should begin her apologies with some sickly woman she's never met before. And still, it pours out of her. "The storm, that was--I'm sorry you were caught in it. I never meant to hurt..."

_Anna. Arendelle. Anyone at all._

The woman frowns, plainly surprised. "What do you mean, you're sorry? Storms happen. I should've been paying more attention, than to fly right into it."

Fly. Spell. What are these words the woman keeps using, and why does she utter them with such forced ease? As though she is daring Elsa to argue, to call her mad, or to pin her with some cruel name. 

"You...you have magic," Elsa observes slowly, cautiously. The woman's eyes narrow again, but, apparently sensing no malignancy in the words, allows herself a nod.

"And you...you  _flew_  here?" She tries to imagine what it would be like, to coast on waves of air and cloud. How far could she get from that nightmare of a ball, if only she could fly?

The woman nods again, studying her. "You aren't frightened?"

 _Yes. A little. But not of you._ "Why should I be?" She tries to make it sound like a challenge, with the same false bite the woman injects into her every phrase. To her own ears, she comes off sounding very young, very foolish. The woman almost smiles.

It could be a pretty smile, Elsa thinks, if only it lacked such deep, endless hurt.

"Everyone's got their reasons, sweet. It's a matter of control, you know. The control I lose when I'm emotional. The control other people can't--can't  _keep_  over me." She grinds her jaw for a moment, lost inside her head. "Control is the name of the game, I've come to realize, and if they want to keep me down, they'll just have to--"

 _Come and get me_ , Elsa thinks, her blood pumping a ferocious melody in her ears.  _The control I lose when I'm emotional._  How familiar.

"My name is Elsa," she says in a rush of impulse. "Elsa of--uh, just Elsa, I suppose."

The woman gives her a long look, appraisingly. "Elsa of just Elsa. Very nice." She hesitates, calculating, then: "Elphaba. Thropp."

"Elphaba." It feels odd on her tongue, the way  _Galinda_  had sounded to her ears. "A pleasure to meet you."

"Entirely," Elphaba replies dryly, wearing that almost-pretty almost smile again. She glances over Elsa's shoulder, taking in--apparently for the first time--the gleaming castle of ice. "This is your doing, then?"

Elsa jerks unpleasantly, and the woman gives a laugh that comes very near to being pleasant. "Don't be so skittish, girl."

"Elsa," she corrects instinctively. Elphaba nods.

"Elsa, yes. You apologized for the snow. You're running around in...well, in  _that_. Doesn't take so much effort, adding up the sums." There is something like admiration in her voice, Elsa thinks. A surprising quality in such a hard-faced woman.

Hard-faced--but not so old, perhaps. Maybe younger even than Elsa. There is something about the way this Elphaba moves and speaks, something careful and delicately maintained, that reminds her of Anna in formal settings. Anna, trying too hard to appear more mature than she actually is. Anna, with shoulders held back too far to be comfortable, Anna, doing her best to pay attention when she truly couldn't care less. Anna is--

 _Not here_ , Elsa reminds herself firmly.  _Not ever again._

Elphaba pulls her cloak more tightly around herself, shivering. "So you're cursed too, then. Congratulations. Delightful club to be in, if I do say so myself. Although you're a far sight nearer to  _pretty_  than I'll ever be."

No real bitterness behind the words. She says it almost fondly, as if speaking of a very old friend, rather than an acquaintance of only this single conversation. Elsa clears her throat uncomfortably.

"That's why...well. Why I'm..."

"Here?" Elphaba arches a razor-thin brow. "If you care to find me...well. I suppose this is where I suggested, isn't it? Good old Western sky."

Elsa is understanding less and less the more this woman speaks, and there is something grating about her mounting discomfort. The woman seems too comfortable. Comfortable is dangerous. Anna was comfortable, and then--

"You can't stay," she blurts, and realizes belatedly how quickly the trickle of frosty fog is making its way up her own legs. Elphaba tilts her head, a curious green bird of prey.

"Whoever said I was planning to?"

"No--I mean...you just can't. I have to be alone. I--that's how it should be."

She finishes miserably, furious with herself for it. She should be stronger than this. It's all over now, after all. Nothing left to fear. If she's ever to let it all go, the grief over what she's lost must go first. 

Astonishingly, the woman's face softens. The cheekbones are still too high, the jut of her chin too prominent, but her eyes are gentle. Bathed in the glow of the dying flames, she is almost lovely for a moment. Almost.

"I'll go. Just as soon as the sun comes up, I'll be out of your hair. You have my word on that, broom or no, but--Elsa? Bit of free advice?"

_Advice from the green-skinned woman who crash-landed on my mountaintop? Sure. What's the harm?_

"Don't be alone." Her voice is grit, her mouth a line of absolute honesty. "Not because--not because you choose it. If you invite someone in, and they happen to fail you, that's one thing. But don't be alone by choice. For us...for people like us, it isn't good. Isn't..."

She trails off, wandering down a private road Elsa is not privy to, and shakes her head.  _Galinda_ , Elsa thinks, and wonders if that might not be a name. She won't ask. The woman wouldn't tell her anyway.

Exhausted, plainly still in some pain from her fall, it isn't long before Elphaba turns to the fire, stokes it back to life (Elsa does not see how she does it, though she catches a snatch of nonsense words on the wind just before the flames roar higher than Elsa herself would have dared), and stretches out to sleep again. Elsa watches her for another hour, trying to look as though she is busy crafting an ice village in miniature, but she offers no more words of wisdom, or sarcasm, or explanation. She simply folds in on herself as best she can, all bones and knees and wafting black cloak.

In the morning, she is gone. There are no footprints in the snow, and the fire is gone, dead and buried with the careful attention of someone who does not wish to be followed. In the morning, Elsa finds it very difficult to tell for sure if there really had been a green woman at all in her unwitting trap. A  _green_  woman? Surely that's madness. Surely, a  _green_  woman who flew in on a  _broomstick--_ that must be truly insane. Surely. _  
_

And still, with her elbows propped upon her crystal balcony, Elsa can't seem to rid herself of those black bead eyes. _Don't be alone. Not by choice._

"If only," she whispers tiredly. "If only choice had anything to do with it."

Flypaper does only what it's meant for, after all. Good intent cannot quell a storm.

She suspects the green woman knew that as well as anyone ever could.


End file.
